Huckleberry Finn- End of Book- Blog #4

As I finished the book The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn I realized that all the themes about society are finally coming together. The themes seemed easier to understand and helped me connect to earlier ones in earlier chapters.

As tom’s reputation seems to always be of importance to him he reminds me of how society is. Peer pressure and conformity are what Tom represents. From this you can confer that Huck is usually against or thinks he’s immature so with this Huck has proven that he is unlike society and is a one of a kind person. Tom is a foil to Huck because Tom brings out the qualities in Huck that are not what society is unlike Tom who is society. When trying to free Jim Huck feels he has nothing to lose but Tom does. He tries not to get Tom involved with the freeing but Tom insists. Tom has a family and a life at home and Huck just has Jim and his life. Huck is willing to give up his life for Jim’s which proves that he thinks of himself as small in the world or a grain of sand on the beach. He thinks he is a worthless member of society.

The theme of racism blatantly makes its appearance when Jim and Sally are talking about the steam boat explosion. Sally is asking Jim if anyone was on the boat or got hurt. Jim replies, “no’m. Killed a nigger.” Sally replies back, “Well its lucky. Because sometimes people do get hurt.” This hit a home run for me because I knew that this type of racism was present in the book but I never knew it was this harsh. Some of the people think the African Americans are not real people! Sally thinks the black person that died is nothing compared to if a white person did. Now, as a reader, I know what Huck has been dealing with throughout the whole book.  He is trying to decide right from wrong with a white racist society pounding in his head.

Tom’s actions in the endings of this book made my emotions and mind go haywire. Tom’s real personality comes out when he knew for two months that Jim had been free because Miss Watson died and set him free in her will. He plays along with Jim and Huck thinking it is more of a game rather than a serious situation. Again, Tom is the white racist’s society because he thinks of Jim as a slave rather than a person like the other people of that time period.

In the last chapters when tom gets injured Jim proves to the readers again that he is a real human being by helping the doctor treat Tom. But then, the argument appears about Miss Watsons will saying that freeing Jim does not apply immediately but only a suggestion. So anyone can say Jim is still a slave. As the family is bickering over the situation I wonder that now I know why Huck backed away from the white society. Mark Twain finishes the book after the civil war ends, which means that slavery has been abolished and African Americans are now free. They are free in a literally sense but not a mental sense. Some people will still think of them as the same slaves of nothing.  This theme is that again people never really accept change.

Huckleberry Finn- Blog #3

Huck has slowly but surely matured greatly for the better when we read further into the book. His maturity shows when he gets confronted with problems. Him and Jim had faced many challenges together but as they continue together Huck now thinks and reacts in a more adult manor than he did in the beginning of the book like when playing games with Tom Sawyer.  Examples in chapter 24 when Huck witnesses two con men steal from the Wilks sisters. He says he is ashamed to be a part of the human race. The sad part is that people still do that today. Even though Huck knows it is wrong of them to do that he takes the money from them and indirectly gives it back to the Wilks sisters without telling them they had it stolen in the first place and who stole it. This proves that Huck knows right from wrong but is not brave enough or know enough to do the right thing and tell them the whole story.

Does Huck turn Jim in as a slave and get money or does he travel with him and do the right thing? As Huck slowly sees Jim as an actual person and not as a slave he realizes that he needs to protect him from outside people that only think of him as a worker. This internal conflict that arises in Huck will fight between his heart and mind. He will need to decide more on what is right and what is wrong, not what other people think.

Huck finally has dropped religion and praying when Jim gets captured and he realizes praying to God will not help him. This personality trait Huck learned from the white part of society that God will give you everything did not work well with Huck. This shows Huck’s innocence and child-like part that is still inside of him because he does not get that praying is not like wishing. Right now Huck is not fully matured yet.

Huckleberry Finn- Blog #2

What Mark Twain is trying to tell his readers at the beginning of this reading is how Huck’s father “pap” is like society. This satire is since Pap tried to convince the judge that he is not a drunk and he has changed from a bad non-caring father to one that now cares for his son. When he finally hangs around Huck but treats him horribly judge finds out and tries to take Huck away from his abusive father. Pap takes him away by hiding him in the woods so no one can take him away. Anyway he only took Huck because he has a lot of money that he gave to judge so his father could not take it. This represents society because people are like this. Humans mooch off other humans to get what they want. They are greedy and most do not like change.

All the superstitions that Jim comes up with or grew up with all come out one by one during the reading of Huckleberry Finn. The rattlesnake prank, the burnt spider, and now the dead body floating down the river are all superstitions that have appeared. When Huck and Jim found that body in the shore house Jim knew it was Huck’s dad but did not tell Huck because he did not want to make him upset. It happens once more when Jim and Huck see a dead body floating down the river. Jim again says not to look at it because it says it will bring him bad luck. This is also satire because it is like people in the world covering up the truth. Jim makes up the superstition so Huck will believe him and not get suspicious. People in the word avoid heartbreak and pain by covering up the truth and lying so they do not hurt themselves or other people.

What I thought to be humorous and also hypocritical was the Gangerford and Shepardson families seemed to be so religious but yet did a lot of things against God. The Ten Commandments were rarely followed or even mentioned and they carried guns with them everywhere, even to church. And a family murder seemed to be families past time as if it was like going on vacation. I found reading this about these two families a little like our world. It has people that are against gun control but then blame the people on shooting and murders or the other way around.

In this reading Jim makes himself vulnerable to Huck by confessing his flaws and errors that he had done to his family. He also spoke to Huck as if he was part of his family. He tells Huck the story of when he beat his daughter even though she did not deserve it in the first place. I am predicting that reading even farther in the book Jim will release more and more of his emotions and feelings to Huck. The result of this is Huck will think of Jim less as a slave or more as an actual person like himself.

Huckleberry Finn- Blog #1

Starting the reading in chapter one I found out that Huckleberry is simply a boy that has a troublesome dad, Miss Watson who should be his actual guardian, and so far his friends including Tom Sawyer who are all in a robber club destined to kidnap and steal treasure and women. Huck is young maybe about ten years old and lives with Miss Watson who, you could say, trains him to be a good boy. She is religious and teaches Huck about heaven and hell. I found this to be humorous in chapter one on page 8 when Huck said he wanted to smoke. Asking Miss Watson if he could she returns the answer no because she said “it’s a mean practice and wasn’t clean.” But of course, Widow or Miss Watson takes snuff which is ok in her mind. Just by reading this I came up with a hypothesis that throughout the book nothing will really seem to go in the favor of Huckleberry.

Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry are young, naive, and gullible. Anything Tom reads in books he believes will come true. The gang/ club they have with other boys think a ransom is when you keep someone kidnapped until they die. This proves that having Huckleberry Fin as the narrator of the book is and will be hard for readers to believe in him. He would be called an unreliable narrator.

I also learned that throughout this reading people back then were very superstitious. In chapter one when huckleberry accidentally flicked a spider into a candle and burned it he didn’t know if that was a sign that bad luck was coming his way. Another superstitious event is when Huck accidentally spilt salt on the table and threw it over his shoulder and widow yelled at him. This further proves my point that Huckleberry is an unlucky boy.

Fast forwarding through the reading, I come to the part when Huck’s pap comes and takes him away from widow and school so he had control of him. Maybe he is intimidated by the fact that he’s a drunk and his son is smarter than him by going to school. Or maybe he just likes the feeling of being in control. Either or, Huck and is pap now live down the river away from everyone and everything and slowly Huck began liking the feeling of living on their own and fending for themselves. He wonders why he even liked being polite and sophisticated in the first place. The only downside to living down the river with his pap was that his pap was a drunk and abused him. Whenever he left for town to get more liquor there was a chance he would not be back for days while Huck was locked up inside. Huck comes up with this plan to escape and runaway but to frame it to look like someone killed him and dumped his body in the river. He pulled it off and ended up on an island.  

While on the island a known but unknown friend appears on the same island. Miss Watson’s Jim or slave has runaway also because Miss Watson could not afford him anymore so he was going to be lynched or killed. Through chapter 8 through 11 Huck and Jim runaway together and face challenges together including finding a house with a dead man in it. I thought this was strange that a random dead man was in the house but they didn’t think anything of it. Back then it must have been not a rare thing to walk into a home with a dead man on the floor because then they continue to steal items from the house.

I noticed satire in chapter 8 when Mark Twain makes fun of religious people who think whenever you pray to God he will make it happen. When the search for Huck was on people put out loaves of bread to see where his body would have floated to. When a loaf reaches Huck he eats it and says,” I reckon the widow or the parson or somebody prayed that this bread would find me and it has gone and done it.” Twain fools around with the idea that religious people who pray for something to happen think it will happen. In this case it did just not in favor of the person praying. I thought this event was quite humorous.

The Things They Carried- Blog #4 Finish Book

The first thing noticeable in the chapter The Ghost Soldiers is that O’Brien’s fears about the dangers of war are actually more intense than the actual danger itself. O’Brien speaks specifically about being shot and shows the experience to the reader. He says the pain pain of being shot is a survivable pain unlike what you see in movies. O’Brien realizes that the actual pain from being shot is much less frightening than the thought of being shot.

The second time O’Brien was shot the actual pain has worn off and he feels nothing but frustration and hatred towards Bobby Jorgenson, who fails to treat O’Brien’s wound properly. As a result, O’Brien almost dies of shock and then again later of gangrene. The wounds O’Brien suffered changed him. Before in the chapter On The Rainy River O’Brien felt an obligation to do the right thing, now he is left with only a want for revenge.

As a reader I can see that O’Brien’s revenge is also driven by jealousy. He has been removed from the war back to normal where things are much safer. The result of this is he lost the deep connections he had with all the other soldiers. When his platoon comes back to have their week of rest, he sees that Bobby Jorgenson is now more a part of the platoon than he was. O’Brien feels almost as if Bobby has taken his place. This jealousy not only helps to fuel his revenge. We see another transformation between the O’Brien before the war and the O’Brien after the experience of war. He is now jealous that he can’t be the one fighting by his fellow soldiers in his platoon.

The Things They Carried- Blog #3

When reading this chapter I was really surprised to see Kiowa, the peaceful Native American who serves as a foil to some of the characters in the story, suddenly killed. Surprisingly a character like her usually isn’t killed early in books. Kiowa’s death affects all of the men, especially Norman, and allows the reader to look within the mind of the troubled soldier after such an experience. This looking into of Norman’s mind is brought on by the way the story was written, which is through Norman’s narrative as he drives around his hometown post war. Switching back and forth between the story of Kiowa’s death and how Norman Baker is dealing post war allows this chapter to not only be about Kiowa’s death, but also how some characters deal with the death.

 The chapter Speaking of Bravery shows not only how telling stories recalls the horror and pain of war, but also how this helps the soldiers to move on after the war. We see that O’Brien deals with his pain and guilt through his writing, but we also see that for some soldiers it is not so simple. Norman Baker is one of these soldiers. Norman drives around silently. There is no one he can talk to about the war, ironically because he cannot speak about the war with anyone. This is a result of his almost obsessive thinking about the incident and his own personal guilt for failing to save Kiowa. Another reason for the result of not speaking about the war is because of his father. His father wants him to go and get all these medals from the war when Norman just thinks they’re worthless and mean nothing.

O’Brien used the sewage field in the story to portray the war itself. There was nothing heroic about this war; instead, it is filthy and unclean. We see that in the end, just as Norman could not save Kiowa because of the stench, he could not save himself from the personal guilt of failing his friend. As Norman sits into the lake and submerges himself, he wishes he could go back and find the courage to pull Kiowa from the sewage mud.

The Things They Carried- Blog #2

On page 83 we see some literal relief in the last sentence: “But what wakes me up twenty years later is Dave Jensen singing ‘Lemon Tree’ as we threw down the parts.” Even though it's a little rude this shows the reader what these men went through during their service in Vietnam. Before they knew combat they were normal people, the same as you and me, but now they make mean jokes and take death for granted. This one sentence shows the reader that not only was it used as comic relief, but it was also comic relief the day it happened. Trying to deal with the horrible atrocities on a daily basis caused them to become mean in the mind of a person living a normal life. However, to the soldier these rude jokes were the only way they could deal with witnessing such hideous acts.

O’Brien calls Curt Lemon’s death a “love story” instead of a “war story.” He calls it this because instead of focusing on the worst involved with his death he chose to focus on the beauty of the sunlight as it touched his face a second before he stepped on the mine. This may correspond with what O’Brien said earlier in the chapter about the “proximity to death bring[ing] with it the corresponding proximity to life.” That is, it is not until you experience the horror of death that you begin to see things in a different manner, you begin to really see life in a different perspective. They begin to cherish every moment.

These two points were a way for soldiers who witnessed the horrors of war to attempt to keep things off their shoulders. They would try to make the problems seem somewhat funny in an attempt to not focus on the problem itself in all of its horror. They would also look at things as a great love story rather than a horrifying war story.